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Many tech prognosticators have said Groupon walked away from Google because the Chicago company wanted to preserve its own culture, continue building its own story and pursue its own IPO in 2011. These things could all be true. But there's one niggling matter that hasn't drawn much attention: antitrust scrutiny.

A Silicon Valley source tells Forbes that Groupon was likely asking for a breakup guarantee from Google that the search giant would have to pay Groupon if, in the end, a Justice Department or FTC inquiry broke up the acquisition. Google may not have been willing to potentially sacrifice an amount north of $1 billion for nothing.

Groupon CEO on the cover of Forbes.

Business Insider first reported that a breakup fee could be at the root of failed deal Wednesday night.

While Groupon's operations certainly wouldn't have been interrupted by the Google deal sitting in limbo, it would have wreaked chaos on the ability of CEO Andrew Mason and the rest of the board to plan expansion, make acquisitions and continue to aggressively grow what is the fastest growing company ever. It's hard to operate with an ambiguous future.

The tradeoff for assenting to a period of future ambiguity, of course, is the promise of a large breakup fee if the deal were not to go through. Google gave AdMob a $700 million guarantee when that deal was struck last fall (much to Apple's chagrin). The kill fee was just short of the $750 million purchase price. That's not to say Groupon asked for a $4 billion kill fee from Google, but the number was likely big enough to give Google, a company with $30 billion in cash, reason enough to say no.

And without Google, Groupon can still attain tech immortality if it were to land itself in the first row of Web properties alongside the likes of eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo! and, of course, Google.

Groupon's rejection of Google shocked many opining bloggers who thought Mason and Co. were nuts for turning down the dough.